Do you want to know the common mistake that PTs make? Here.. Let me tell you the story on what happened at Chase bank.

I was in vacation mode; the place is sweet, we went out for a late breakfast, woke up like at 9:30, 10:00, then we went to a Chase Bank.

My wife is like, “we need to get cheques, and we have meant to do it for so long, ”

We just go to the bank and just get it done and Chase is open on Saturday. There are two people working in their little cubicles with customers, and then there’s a lady that I think she’s running the front, and she comes out to us, and she’s nice saying, “how can I help you?”

“I need to order cheques from my account, and I need it for my consulting account” I have my main business account at another bank, but I said, “I need to take my consulting account”

And she is like, “Well, sir, we can wait for one of these other people to finish but if you want we can go on to chase.com and we just probably order them there.”

Now, I knew I could order them there. I could have figured it out myself, but I wanted to go into the bank and deal with someone. Someone to order cheques for me, and I wanted to get it for another account.

I had a couple of questions about my consulting account, like certain things I might want to do specially because I have three full time employees that I am looking to move tomorrow.

But as soon as I went in, the person that was there was trying to show me how I can use this and how I didn’t need her.

Long story short is that she got sidetracked, someone else came into the bank, she had to take them, she said, “I’ll be right back”

And the other two dudes are still working with their customers. We were on our vacation, we weren’t going to throw a hissy fit but we decided, “let’s bounce, it ain’t that important”

I didn’t act a fool, and if you guys know my wife, you know that she is very quiet, but she can be angry black woman if she wants to and she can act a fool.

But we didn’t, we’re on vacation, we’re chilling. We went back and got some Mimosa’s and sandwiches. We’re just chilling. We’re on the beach, staying at the hotel. I said, “Sweety, there’s a lot of lessons back there,” and I want to share that with you guys right now. This has to do with physical therapy.

Physical Therapist Common Fail – My Story of What Happened at Chase Bank

We get pissed off when McDonald’s is now using computers instead of people to order food.

We get pissed off when we go into the bank, and now the banks got computers instead of people.

But you know what, physical therapist, they get pissed when insurances used to give us 25 visits for our patient and now they are giving us 20. Then it’s gone on to 15, then went out to 10, and now it’s 5.

We get pissed about that, don’t we? We get angry. What that lady did at Chase, I see physical therapists doing that all the time. A person comes in for physical therapy; they need help, the person doesn’t really care to do physical therapy, they just know that they need help.

“My leg is tripping; my knee or my shoulder” and you know that there is more physical therapist than not that do this, “you know what, I can just… why don’t I just print you out a whole program and save you money today and you can just take this and just go home and come back in three weeks.”

Isn’t that the same thing the lady did to me?

I went into the bank because I wanted to order cheques in front of you, I don’t want you to do it online, because I would have done it myself online, I am pretty tech-savvy I can figure that out.

Don’t sabotage yourself

As soon as I left that bank and I went to go sit down for lunch, I said, “that is our profession” we are sabotaging ourselves. We’re doing it all the time.

Before you can even wait for the person to say, “I don’t want to come for therapy” you are already like, “don’t worry you don’t have to come anymore.” “don’t worry you can do this at home” “don’t worry we can do this” it’s the truth.

As soon as I left there, I said, “that right there is our profession”

Then on the flip side, what I am teaching my Smart Success PT students is how to do the total opposite. It’s how to by asking the right questions at the evaluation. How to focus on what the patient truly wants.

What is their objective?

Do you their goals?

Ask them what they want.

We’re going to get you – I am going to get you to those goals, and I am not going to give you a whole paper program with stick figures and say, “that’s what I spent three and a half years to get a DPT for” I see that all the time. I am hearing that in some of my other groups, I had to answer questions from these people are like, “we can’t do that, can we?” it’s like we are that lady at Chase.

We’ve been conditioned by physical therapy.

That’s what our profession has become.

If you continue to do that, you know what my impression as a customer on Saturday at Chase? “I don’t need any of them; I will do everything online”

That lady does that to another person and another person, guess what she’s doing. She is showing that she has no value. She’s saying, “I have no value.” You could do it with me, but you could also do it online.

You could do physical therapy with me, but I can give you this piece of paper, and you could follow it too. It shows you have no value.

Eight months from now, when her regional director from Chase comes in and says to her, “Nancy, you are done here. Pack up your things and bounce” in a nice way obviously. She’s going to be shocked. But really, didn’t Nancy just create her ending by what she did to me on Saturday?

And what I say to you all is this, don’t be shocked if you keep on tripping. Don’t be shocked if you keep on dummying down and belittling the things that you do.